Akiko held his gaze. ‘Well, I’ve never been taught by an Italian before, but I’m willing to take that risk.’

Signor Horatio stared at her a moment, then laughed. ‘Touché, signorina. You shame me with your wit and virtue.’ He inclined his head. ‘I apologize for my small-mindedness. You are a most welcome student.’ He glanced in Yori and Rose’s direction. ‘In fact, everyone is invited to train at Signor Horatio’s School of Fencing.’

Bowing his gratitude, Yori excused himself. ‘I thank you, Signor Horatio, but I need to blend some more herbs for Jack’s wounds.’

Thanks to Yori’s medicinal skills, Jack was recovering fast from his ordeal in the bear-baiting pit. After just one night the scratches across his chest and the claw marks on his back were already beginning to heal, and Yori had assured him that within a week he’d be fighting fit again – although a week seemed a long time in the search for his sister.

‘How about you, Rose?’ asked Signor Horatio, inviting her to take a sword from the rack.

Rose shook her head, her red hair blazing like the morning sun. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m just watching you.’

Signor Horatio raised an eyebrow at her, and Rose smiled coyly. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘my leg still needs to heal.’

With a gentle inclination of the head, Signor Horatio strode over to the sword rack and selected a pair of leather-capped rapiers. He presented them to his two students. ‘You’ll find that the rapier handles very differently to a katana. Feel how the weight is concentrated in the hilt. This allows the blade’s tip to make rapid, agile and long-reaching attacks.’

‘It’s almost weightless,’ Jack remarked, balancing the sword in his hand.

‘And so it should be. The rapier,’ Signor Horatio explained, unsheathing his own sword, ‘should be a natural extension of your arm. While I can appreciate your katana’s superiority as a cutting blade, in a fencing duel the shortest distance between two opponents isn’t the curved line of a cut – it’s the straight line of a thrust.’ And in one fluid movement he lunged at the straw dummy hanging in the corner of the courtyard. Covering the distance in a single bound, the rapier’s tip plunged into the heart of its target. The straw dummy bled several grains of barley as Signor Horatio swiftly withdrew the slender blade and returned to his position in the centre of the yard.

‘As you can see,’ he said, ‘the rapier combined with a lunge has a range well beyond the effective reach of a katana. That’s why, Jack, you found yourself at such a disadvantage duelling Sir Toby. Before you could even begin to attack, he would have been able to land a potentially lethal strike.’

Jack grimaced, recalling the peppering of small wounds Sir Toby had inflicted on his body, face and hands.